A decision is expected this week as to whether Yarmouth will stage any more racing this year following the recent abandonment there due to unsafe conditions. Slipping horses have been a feature at the East Anglia track since it reopened last month with a relaid home straight and matters were brought to a head on Wednesday when two jockeys were unseated as their mounts lost their footing while trying to slow down after the finish.
“The course will be reviewed this week with the contractors we’ve worked with throughout,” said Susannah Gill, director of external affairs for ARC, which owns Yarmouth. “We want to race, if the course is safe and if we won’t be compromising the course for next year and all the work we’ve done so far. But if either of those factors is a question, we won’t race.”
Yarmouth has two remaining fixtures this year, on 20 and 27 October, and Gill said she wanted an early decision about whether they would be staged, to allow those in racing to include them in their plans. She added that safety had been “at the front of our minds at every point in the process”.
“This was always going to be a difficult year,” she said, alluding to the relaying of the mile-long straight at a cost of £300,000. “We’re dealing with immature turf and things have been made more difficult by the weather. We were late to seed and then we had a wet spring, so we were immediately on the back foot.”
Yarmouth’s reopening fixture in late August was notable for the fact that five runners slipped as they joined the new straight from the old round course. Another horse slipped at the same point on the track on Tuesday, prompting remedial work there before the next day’s action.
“We verti-drained,” Gill reported, “which, in very basic language, involves sticking big pins into the ground to create air and break up the turf, so that it’s not compacted. Then the turf was watered and sanded.
“A couple of jockeys looked at it before racing [on Wednesday], as did our team and the British Horseracing Authority’s team. It was as good as it could be and we didn’t have any problems there on Wednesday.”
Gill said the unseating incidents on Wednesday were caused by heavy rain on fast ground, a familiar cause of slippy conditions at many racetracks, and added that the track was still too “greasy and slippy” to stage racing on Thursday. “As I’ve said, we’re dealing with immature turf, which doesn’t have the root depth you get with time and which we hope to help create over the winter. It’ll be a better course for a bit of time by next year.”
Ascot is another track that could do without any more rain, following the news that Gleneagles is being aimed at the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes there on 17 October. The Irish horse established his reputation as a brilliant miler in the early part of the season but has since become best known for being a late withdrawal from major races due to rain-softened ground.
“He’s probably going to be trained for the mile race at Ascot,” his trainer, Aidan O’Brien, said on Sunday. “At the moment that’s what we are thinking.”
Gleneagles, who has not raced since Royal Ascot more than three months ago, is 4-1 or shorter with most firms for the QEII but is still on offer at 10-1 in a handful of places. His main rival would be the French-trained Solow, winner of his last eight races.
